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11
The Cost-Effectiveness of Certification as
a Means of Improving Teacher Quality
The congressional bill that authorized the National Research Council
to conduct this evaluation contained specific language requesting consider-
ation of the extent to which certification by the National Board for Profes-
sional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) is a cost-effective method for improving
teacher quality. While this is a challenging question to address, we under-
stand why it has been posed. Although the board got its start from private
funding, since 1991 it has received considerable federal money to support
its work. Given the federal dollars invested in the program, it is reasonable
for Congress to ask if the investment has been wise.
To respond to this aspect of the committeeâs charge, our evaluation
framework includes the following question:
Question 8: To what extent does the advanced-level teacher certifi-
cation program accomplish its objectives in a cost-effective manner,
relative to other approaches intended to improve teacher quality?
As before, we refer to Figure 2-1 for our model of the kinds of impacts
that an advanced-level certification program for teachers might have. The
question we address in this chapter does not explicitly appear in the model,
but we regard it as an overarching question about the net effect of the vari-
ous impacts of an advanced-level certification program, when considered in
the context of the costs of the program. Addressing Question 8 requires us
to summarize the benefits of the NBPTS, consider its costs, and compare
the resulting cost-effectiveness with that of other interventions designed to
223

224 ASSESSING ACCOMPLISHED TEACHING
improve teacher quality. We identified the following issues to investigate
and to provide evidence about the cost-effectiveness of the national boardâs
certification program, specifically:
a. What are the benefits of the certification program?
b. What are the costs associated with the certification program?
c. What other approaches have been shown to bring about improve-
ment in teacher quality? What are their costs and benefits?
It is important to note that the existing research base for such an
inquiry is inadequate. The cost side is not the issue. Although there have
not been extensive examinations of the costs associated with the NBPTS,
a relatively coarse consideration of costs is sufficient for the task at hand.
Rather, it is the benefits side of the analysis that is the problem. Further-
more, while the evidence about the benefits of the NBPTS is inadequate
for a thorough cost-effectiveness evaluation, even less is known about the
benefits of other interventions to improve teacher quality. As a result, the
kind of cost-effectiveness comparison one would like to perform, and as
stated in our charge, is not possible at this time. Despite the inadequacies in
the evidence base, we lay out the issues to the extent that available research
and data allow. In the sections that follow, we first consider the benefits, the
costs, and the resulting cost-effectiveness of board certification as a route
to improving teacher quality. We then examine the available information
about the cost-effectiveness of four comparison interventions.
BENEFITS ASSOCIATED WITH THE PROGRAM
Before considering the specific benefits of the NBPTS, we step back to
consider the ways in which an intervention intended to improve teacher
quality might operate. There are three kinds of benefits such an interven-
tion might produce:
1. Identifying highly skilled teachers.
2. Improving the practices of teachers who go through the program.
3. Improving the quality of teachers throughout the education system,
keeping accomplished teachers in the field, and attracting stronger
teacher candidates in the future.
We note here that simply identifying highly skilled teachers provides no
direct benefit, and therefore the first benefit requires that some action be
taken once highly skilled teachers are identified. For example, administra-
tors and policy makers could implement incentives for teachers who are
identified as highly skilled, either to encourage them to remain in teaching

THE COST-EFFECTIVENESS OF CERTIFICATION 225
or to encourage them to work in traditionally difficult-to-staff schools.
Teachers identified as highly skilled could also be used as a way of iden-
tifying instructional leaders who could then support other teachers and
thus pass their skills onto other practitioners. We also point out that this
benefit is one that is often claimed by programs that offer advanced-level
certification in other fields, such as nursing or medicine: identification of
highly skilled practitioners is the first step in realizing the benefits offered by
a program that recognizes advanced practice. It is not necessarily a benefit
in and of itself, but it serves as the foundation for other potential benefits.
Moreover, the actual process of defining advanced practice can make a
significant contribution to the field.
While the three benefits are interrelated, they differ in critical ways.
For example, it is possible for an intervention to produce one of these
benefits without providing the other two. In the context of a program like
the NBPTS, it is easy to see that the program may produce the benefit of
identifying highly skilled teachers without improving the teaching ability of
the candidates as they go through the certification process or improving the
quality of teachers throughout the education system. This result can occur if
the certification process itself does not provide candidates with new skills or
if the resulting certification is not used by the system in a way that changes
what teachers are taught, who enters and stays in teaching, and who leaves,
thus having no impact on overall quality.
Other interventions designed to improve teacher quality may focus en-
tirely on one of these kinds of benefits and not at all on others. For example,
inservice professional development is intended to improve teacher quality
directly (Benefit 2) without providing a means for identifying highly skilled
teachers (Benefit 1). However, increasing teacher pay is an intervention in-
tended to improve teacher quality throughout the education system (Benefit 3)
without directly identifying highly skilled teachers (Benefit 1) or directly im-
proving the teaching ability of any particular teachers (Benefit 2).
Of course, improving the teaching quality of teachers throughout the
system (Benefit 3) is presumably the ultimate goal of an intervention fo-
cused on teacher quality, and it is reasonable to assume that identifying
highly skilled teachers (Benefit 1) or improving the teaching abilities of
teachers going through a program (Benefit 2) are just two intermediate
routes to achieving that ultimate goal. However, it is important to consider
these two intermediate benefits separately, because their mechanisms for
influencing teacher quality throughout the system differ. A certification pro-
gram that improves the practices of teachers who participate in it (Benefit 2)
will directly increase the quality of those teachers who participate, as long
as the participants continue to be teachers, which will have a larger system
impact to the extent that many teachers participate. However, a program
that identifies highly qualified teachers without directly improving their

226 ASSESSING ACCOMPLISHED TEACHING
teaching practices will require that the certification be used by the education
system in some way that produces the benefit of increasing teacher qual-
ity throughout the system. In the next sections, we examine the evidence
related to each of these benefits.
Benefit 1: Identifying Highly Skilled Teachers
With respect to the NBPTS programâs ability to identify high-quality
teachers, the available evidence shows that the boardâs certification program
does identify skilled practitioners, whether defined in terms of teachersâ
skills or studentsâ achievement. The content- and construct-based validity
evidence, discussed in Chapter 5, indicates that the assessment is measuring
the knowledge and skills it is intended to measure, which were judged to
represent accomplished teaching. The findings from value-added analyses
addressed in Chapter 7 demonstrate that the assessment is identifying
high-quality teachers with respect to their effectiveness at raising tested
student achievement in mathematics and readingâan important, though
incomplete, indicator of teacher success.
Most of the investigations described in Chapter 7 report results based
on comparisons of board-certified teachers with all other teachers in the
system, a comparison that confounds the ability of the assessment to iden-
tify high-quality teachers with the particular quality mix of their nonboard-
certified colleagues. These investigations show that board-certified teachers
produce gains in student achievement that are, on average, about a 0.04
standard deviation larger than their nonboard-certified colleagues (ranging
from 0.01 to 0.08 in our analyses of North Carolina and Florida). The size
of this difference is roughly one-half to one-fifth of the difference in value-
added between teachers in the top and bottom halves of the distribution
(see Chapter 7).
Thus, while based on a limited conception of student achievement re-
flected by standardized test scores, the findings from value-added analyses
show that the NBPTS certification process does in fact identify teachers
of higher quality. We emphasize that NBPTS certification identifies highly
qualified teachers as determined by value-added analyses of standardized
test scores, without the certification decision being determined by those test
scores themselves. We highlight this point here because this is in contrast to
a certification process, like that being considered for the American Board
for Certification of Teacher Excellenceâs (ABCTE) Distinguished TeacherSM
program, in which value-added measures are a component of certifica-
tion decisions. In this latter case, it would not be unexpected to find that
t
Â­ eachers who earn board certification are more effective at raising their
studentsâ achievement test scores, since that is part of the basis for the cer-
tification decision. The fact that teachers who earn NBPTS certification are

THE COST-EFFECTIVENESS OF CERTIFICATION 227
effective at improving their studentsâ achievement test scores beyond those
who do not earn certification is an important finding, because student test
score gains are not considered in awarding certification. These measures,
board certification and results from value-added analyses, are independent,
imperfect proxies of high-quality teaching, but their overlap provides some
evidence that they are both capturing some aspect of this quality.
Benefit 2: Improving the Practices of Teachers Who Participate
The findings discussed in Chapter 8 show that there is some evidence
that teachersâ practices improve after going through the certification pro-
gram, although at present this evidence is weak and the results are mixed.
Survey results indicate that candidates who go through the process report it
to be a valuable experience. Some empirical research shows that candidates,
even those who fail, may improve their ability to perform tasks similar to
those used for the assessment. Other studies suggest that teachers are less
effective at raising studentsâ test scores while going through the process and,
in some cases, may continue to be less effective after earning certifications.
In our estimation, the evidence with regard to this benefit is not yet conclu-
sive, and we hesitate to draw firm conclusions from the available studies.
Existing research is in need of replication in other states with other samples,
other criteria, and using a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods.
Benefit 3: Improving the Quality of Teachers
Throughout the Education System
As shown in Figure 2-1, there are several different ways in which the
NBPTS certification program could lead to improvements throughout the
education system. Specifically, the program could
3a. improve the teaching practices of individual teachers who go
through the process, whether or not they pass (a benefit that was
also addressed above);
3b. encourage skilled teachers who become board certified to continue
practicing longer;
3c. lead to assigning board-certified teachers to leadership roles that
allow them to help improve the teaching of nonboard-certified
teachers;
3d. improve the sorting of teachers across job assignments by identify-
ing highly skilled teachers and targeting incentives to encourage
teachers to take positions in difficult schools;
3e. encourage potentially effective teachers to enter the teaching field

228 ASSESSING ACCOMPLISHED TEACHING
(i.e., because of the recognition and monetary rewards offered by
advanced-level certification); and
3f. change the teaching profession via the process and result of defin-
ing excellence in teaching.
Aside from improving the practices of individual board-certified teach-
ers (Benefit 2/3a), these mechanisms for improving teaching quality through-
out the education system require that advanced-level certification be used
in effective ways that capitalize on the skills recognized by the credential.
The evidence summarized in Chapters 6, 9, and 10 suggests that this is not
currently being done.
It has been hypothesized that board certificationâand the recognition
and extra pay associated with itâwould encourage high-quality teachers to
continue for a longer period of time in the classroom (Benefit 3b) and would
lead to more effective use of their skills through assignment of board-certi-
fied teachers to work in hard-to-staff schools (Benefit 3d). The evidence
discussed in Chapter 9 is simply too limited to draw any firm conclusions
about this.
Although there is the possibility that the presence of board-certified
teachers could improve the practices of their nonboard-certified colleagues
(Benefit 3c), the studies discussed in Chapter 10 suggest that this is cur-
rently not happening. Not only are there few examples of schools in which
board-certified teachers are used in a formal way as mentors to improve the
practice of their nonboard-certified colleagues, but there is also disturbing
(if anecdotal) evidence that in some schools the ethos of equality across
the faculty leads board-certified teachers to conceal their status from their
colleagues.
Furthermore, although it seems possible that the vision of accomplished
teaching put forth by the NBPTS has influenced some aspects of the teacher
preparation system, it is likely to be impossible to demonstrate how signifi-
cant this influence has been. This does not mean that this impact has not
occurred only that it is difficult to measure.
In considering the impact of the NBPTS on the education system, it is
important to distinguish the effect that board certification can have on the
system on its own from effects that require other actors in the system to use
board certification as a lever for change. If it were established that board
certification acted to improve teacher quality directly (Benefit 2/3a), then no
help from other actors in the system would be necessary. But mechanisms
that require pay increases, recognition, mentoring roles, or tailored teaching
assignments (i.e., assigning board-certified teachers to hard-to-staff schools)
all require the participation of other actors besides the NBPTS. It is clear
that board certification has been used as a policy lever in some states, such
as North Carolina, by adopting an institutional orientation toward sup-

THE COST-EFFECTIVENESS OF CERTIFICATION 229
porting teachers to acquire board certification and by providing financial
support for going through the process and financial rewards for teachers
who earn the credential. However, there are no examples of states that have
systematically used board certification status as a way to identify quali-
fied teachers to act as mentors to improve the teaching practices of other
teachers in their school or district, and there are no examples of states that
have systematically assigned board-certified teachers to work in the more
difficult schools.
We note that considerable effort went into the process of identifying
the standards for the NBPTS assessment. As described in Chapter 3, this
effort brought a wide and diverse set of perspectives together, and currently
the boardâs standards are reflected both in the standards for undergraduate
teacher training and in the accreditation standards for schools of educa-
tion. However, there have not been any systematic studies to evaluate
the impacts of these efforts, particularly in a way that could be used in a
cost-effectiveness analysis. As a result, it is important to acknowledge not
only that there is limited research related to the benefits of board certifica-
tion, but also that there has been inadequate experience with using board
certification as a policy lever for improving teacher quality. The following
conclusion summarizes our synthesis of the effectiveness of board certifica-
tion as a route toward improving teaching quality:
Conclusion 11-1: There is evidence from both a psychometric review of
the assessment process and analysis of student achievement test results that
board certification identifies highly qualified teachers. There is no conclu-
sive evidence that teachers improve their practices by going through the
certification process, and there is essentially no evidence that certification or
the existing recognition and financial incentives awarded to board-Â­certified
teachers in some states are sufficient to substantially increase their tenure
as teachers. However, the ability of board certification to identify highly
qualified teachers suggests that it offers a potential policy lever for increas-
ing teaching quality throughout the system if it were used in ways that have
not yet been tried on a large-scale systematic basis, such as by using board
certification in hiring, promotion, and assignment decisions; systematically
using board-certified teachers as mentors or as teacher leaders; or by tar-
geting incentives to encourage board-certified teachers to work in the more
difficult schools.
Costs Associated with the Program
The costs associated with the NBPTS program include the following,
which are incurred for each teacher who applies for board certification: (1)
the cost of running the assessment program; (2) the time for the candidate

230 ASSESSING ACCOMPLISHED TEACHING
to prepare the materials and go through the assessment process; (3) the time
(or cost) for any mentors or other assistance to candidates as they are going
through the process; and (4) the bonuses that are paid to successful candi-
dates by the states and local school districts that provide such bonuses.
Ideally, one wants to measure all of the above costs, but there are poor
or virtually no data on some of these items, such as the costs borne by
mentors or other teachers who help the applicant. However, these costs
are probably minor compared with the main costs, which include the costs
of running the assessment program, the time of the applicant to prepare
the materials, and the bonuses for board-certified teachers. In addition, for
the purposes of comparing the cost-effectiveness of different mechanisms
for improving teacher quality, it is likely that the available data on both
the effectiveness and the costs will be fairly coarse for most of the options,
so it is likely that a coarse cost analysis for board certification is not only
the best we can do but perhaps also all that is needed. Below we provide
estimates of each of these costs.
Costs of Running the Assessment Program
The test fee, which is currently $2,500, provides one estimate of the
costs of the NBPTS assessment program per applicant. However, this esti-
mate does not account for the full costs of running the program; in 2005,
with roughly 12,000 applications and a test fee of $2,300, the test fee gener-
ated roughly $28 million out of total income for the NBPTS of $42Â million
(personal communication, Joseph Aguerrebere, August 7, 2006). Another
estimate of the cost of the assessment program per applicant would be to
divide the total costs for the organization across all the applicants, with the
justification that the assessment program is essentially the organizationâs
only product. Adding in the institutional costs for maintaining the orga-
nization and regularly updating the assessments spreads those fixed costs
over all current applicants. This gives the average per-applicant cost for
running the assessment program at its current size, but it is important to
note that that average cost would be smaller if there were more applicants
over whom to spread the institutional costs (or higher if there were fewer
applicants). In 2005, using the average per-applicant cost that includes these
institutional costs, this would produce an estimate 50 percent higher than
the test fee alone. To allow for some uncertainty in the appropriate costs
to assign, we use the range of $2,500-$4,000.
In some cases the cost of the test fee ($2,500) is covered by the ap-
plicants and in other cases it is covered by the state, the local district, or
(indirectly) by the federal government. That is, the federal government cur-
rently provides funding to states for teacher improvement efforts, and some
states draw from this funding to support bonuses for teachers who earn

THE COST-EFFECTIVENESS OF CERTIFICATION 231
board certification. During the 2005-2006 school year, 36 of the 51 states
(including the District of Columbia) provided some sort of fee assistance.
Nine of these states covered the full fee for applicants, although some im-
pose limitations, such as the number of applicants allowed per year or a
requirement that the candidate pass. Ten of the states paid most of the fee
($2,000-2,250), and 16 offered partial assistance of $1,250 or less.
Note that the cost of running the assessment process does not include
the development costs of the NBPTS, which were roughly $200 million
(Hannaway and Bischoff, 2005) and covered by a mix of public and pri-
vate sources. Since that cost is money already spent, it is inappropriate to
include it in an analysis of the ongoing cost-effectiveness of the program
as a means for increasing teacher quality. However, in a later section, we
discuss the nature of the countryâs $200 million investment in the research
and development leading to board certification and consider the cost-
e
Â­ ffectiveness of that investment.
Cost to Applicants for Preparing for the Assessment
Cohen and Rice (2005) estimate that candidates spend approximately
400 hours during the assessment processâpreparing their portfolio and
preparing for and taking the assessment center exercises. In addition, they
estimate that candidates spend approximately $350 on supplies related to
the preparation of their portfolio submission.
In most cases, the time cost to the applicants is likely to be largely un-
reimbursed so that the applicant bears the cost of preparing her or his own
portfolio. However, in some states or districts, candidates can obtain release
time for preparing their materials, which shifts the costs from the applicant
to the state or local government. Assuming an average salary with benefits
of $60,000 and a 1,600-hour work year, the 400-hour time cost for appli-
cants to prepare their portfolios would translate into $15,000 of salary and
benefits, if the preparation time were fully reimbursed. In the 2005-2006
school year, six states offered teachers release time while preparing for the
assessment. However, even in these states, the amount of time allotted for
assessment preparation ranges from two to five days, which is far below the
Hannaway and Bischoff (2005) estimate the costs of research and development to be $200
million, which includes both direct and indirect costs. The NBPTS estimates the costs to be
somewhat less, approximately $125 million, which excludes some of the costs for outreach,
recruitment, support, and other overhead.
â
The average salary without benefits for 2004-2005 was $47,750 in current dollars (http://
nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d06/). Hess (2004) cites an unreferenced figure of 26 percent of
salary for the cost of benefits for teachers and an estimate of 38 weeks of work per year at 45
hours per week (http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3438676.html).

232 ASSESSING ACCOMPLISHED TEACHING
average time teachers spend in preparation. Thus, essentially the full cost of
the preparation time is currently borne by the applicants themselves.
Costs of Mentors and Support Programs
The NBPTS estimates that approximately 80 percent of candidates
participate in a support program of one kind or another, although the basis
for this figure is unclear and the kind of support offered by these programs
varies considerably across jurisdictions. In some school systems, support is
provided in a relatively informal manner, such as weekly meetings among
the candidates with mentorship provided by teachers who are already board
certified. These informal support programs are relatively inexpensive. Other
school systems have more formal support programs, which can be much
more costly.
To some extent, the availability of board-certified teachers in the juris-
diction influences the kind of support that is offered. In districts in which
board certification is encouraged, there tend to be more board-certified
teachers, which means there is an available resource of teachers who can
both lobby for funding for support programs and offer their services in as-
sisting teacher candidates. In districts with fewer board-certified teachers,
candidates may be on their own as they assemble their portfolios. In cases
in which candidates obtain informal mentoring and support from their
colleagues in preparing their materials, it is plausible that the cost of such
support is likely to be in the form of unreimbursed time for the mentors.
Without having any firm basis for evaluating this cost, we speculate that
it might range from 10 to 40 hours. If reimbursed, the above estimates of
salary and hours suggest that this mentoring time would cost roughly $400-
$1,500, and so we use a cost of $1,000 for informal support.
Cohen and Rice (2005) conducted an analysis of the costs of four
formal support programs. The services offered by these programs varied
widely as did the number of participants served. The authors report that
program-related costs per participant were $1,000 (60 participants), $2,600
(100 participants), $5,600 (70 participants), and $11,200 (9 participants).
They indicated that some of this variability in costs is explained by the
economy of scale realized by the larger programs and some is a function
of design. Not all candidates participate in such formal programs of sup-
port, and only scant data are available on the prevalence of such programs.
We judged the highest cost ($11,200) to be an outlier and not typical of
the kinds of support offered throughout the country. Based on the above,
we estimate the typical cost of support to be between $1,000 and $5,000,
whether formally or informally provided.

THE COST-EFFECTIVENESS OF CERTIFICATION 233
Costs of Salary Bonuses to Board-Certified Teachers
The salary bonuses for successful candidates that some states provide
come in a variety of forms. Sometimes they are expressed as a percentage
of the base salary, sometimes as a promotion on the stateâs career ladder,
and sometimes as a specific amount of money. During the 2005-2006
school year, 36 states (including the District of Columbia) provided such
bonuses, and they ranged from a low of $1,000 per year (in five states) to a
high of $7,500 per year (in one state). The average bonus generally ranged
between $3,000 and $5,000 per year, with a median value of $2,100.
Overall Cost per Applicant
Table 11-1 summarizes the overall costs associated with applying for
board certification. Because the time costs of candidates and mentors may
not be reimbursed, they are included in the table as both dollar costs and
hours. The costs for a successful applicant in the year of application thus
total roughly $20,000, if all costs are converted into dollars. Since roughly
half of all candidates are successfully certified and since certification lasts
for 10 years, this means that the application costs for every two applicants
can be spread over 10 years of teaching by a single board-certified teacher,
resulting in a cost of $4,000 per year of certified teaching. To obtain the
total cost per year of certified teaching, we need to add the per-year cost of
the salary bonuses, roughly $3,000-$5,000, to the per-year cost of a suc-
cessful application, resulting in a cost of $7,000-$9,000 per year of certified
teaching. Roughly half of this cost is paid for by the candidates themselves,
on average, mostly in the form of their unreimbursed time in preparing for
the assessment. If the cost of the unreimbursed time for candidates is ex-
cluded, the costs are roughly $4,000-6,000 per year of certified teaching.
â is important to distinguish between the cost to society and the cost to the public. For
It
the cost to society, we include the teachersâ unreimbursed time to prepare but not the costs
of the salary incentives that are a benefit to the teacher; for the cost to the public, we exclude
the teachersâ unreimbursed time to prepare but include the costs of the salary incentives. As a
result, the two different types of costs should be roughly the same.
($20,000 Ã 2)/10. The calculation in the text understates the eventual pass rate, which is
â
closer to 60-65 percent, and overstates the period of time the board-certified teachers teach,
which is unknown but is certainly less than the full 10 years that the NBPTS certificate lasts.
For the purposes of the rough cost calculation that we are performing here, we assume that
the understated pass rate and the overstated period of teaching will approximately cancel
each other out, with the net result that roughly 10 years of certified teaching results from
every two applications. In addition, we ignore the effects of time discounting even though the
costs and benefits occur over an extended period of time; given the coarseness of the figures
that are available about both the benefits and the costs, this additional refinement would not
appreciably affect the result.

234 ASSESSING ACCOMPLISHED TEACHING
TABLE 11-1â Costs Associated with National Board Certification
Type of Cost Cost Who Pays
Running the assessment $2,500-$4,000 Candidate or state (NBPTS
process subsidy)
Cost to applicants of $15,350 Candidate or state
preparing the materials (or 400 hours and $350)
Mentors and support $1,000-$5,000 Mentor or state
programs
Salary bonuses $3,000-$5,000 per yr State
COST-EFFECTIVENESS OF THE PROGRAM
To estimate the cost-effectiveness of the NBPTS program, we combine
the information on the benefits and the information on the costs from the
preceding two sections. As stated in Conclusion 11-1, there is no conclusive
evidence yet that board certification directly improves the teaching practices
of candidates or that it has led to the improvements across the educational
system in the ways enumerated (in Benefits 3a through 3f). As a result, there
is little evidence that we can use for a cost-effectiveness analysis. However,
board certification does offer a way of identifying high-quality teachers, and
the difference between board-certified teachers and nonapplicants reported
in value-added analyses provides a quantitative estimate that can be used
in cost-effectiveness analyses. As stated above, in order for the difference
in effectiveness signaled by board certification to have an effect, it must be
used. Below, to estimate the cost-effectiveness of the program, we develop a
hypothetical example of a policy intervention that required all experienced
teachers to become board certified. This hypothetical example allows us to
use the results from value-added analyses to explore the overall impact of
such a policy on system-wide teacher effectiveness.
Evidence from value-added analyses suggests that board-certified teach-
ers produce student achievement test scores that are 0.04 standard devia-
tion higher than those produced by the average nonapplicant. We consider
this in the context of a hypothetical policy in which all teachers were re-
quired to become board certified (which admittedly is both untried and, at
present, unrealistic). If this were the case and all students were instructed
by board-certified teachers, this intervention would potentially offer a way
to increase student achievement by 0.04 standard deviation on average (per
â
This means 4 percent of a standard deviation. Thus, if the testâs standard deviation was 25,
4 percent of a standard deviation would be 1 score point.

THE COST-EFFECTIVENESS OF CERTIFICATION 235
year). The costs of the current system suggest that the public cost of this
intervention might be roughly $7,000-$9,000 per year of certified teaching
if the candidatesâ time is reimbursed, or $4,000-$6,000 if it is not. This is
a cost of $1,750-$2,250 per 0.01 standard deviation increase per class per
year if the candidatesâ time is reimbursed, or $1,000-$1,500 if it is not.
We reiterate that because the empirical research leading to our estimate
of 0.04 of a standard deviation gain in test scores finds that board-certified
teachers are this much more effective on average, both before and after
undergoing the certification process, we caution that this should not be in-
terpreted as a benefit that is caused by the NBPTS process alone. Rather, the
cost-effectiveness is calculated with respect to a policy that combines board
certification with a requirement that all teachers obtain that certificationâit
is the combination of board certification and the mandatory requirement
that would hypothetically have the cost-effectiveness that we have calcu-
lated. It is important to note that the hypothesized policy intervention of
requiring all teachers to become board certified goes beyond our current
experience with the program and would require careful examination and
experimentation before anyone should consider the adoption of such a
policy.
Comparisons with other mechanisms
for improving teacher quality
Estimates of cost-effectiveness are difficult to interpret in isolation.
For a cost-benefit analysis, in which the benefits of an intervention are
monetized, it is possible to determine whether the benefits are greater
than the costs. In contrast, in cost-effectiveness analyses, the benefit of the
intervention is not necessarily monetized, often because of uncertainty or
disagreement about the appropriate monetary value to place on the benefit.
In this case, it is necessary to compare the resulting cost-effectiveness of the
intervention with other mechanisms for achieving the benefits.
For the NBPTS, it is important to note that there are no other oper-
ating programs that offer advanced-level certification for teachers on a
national, large-scale basis (although there are local programs for acknowl-
edging accomplished teachers, for example in Cincinnati and California).
However, three comparison interventions seem to offer an appropriate
comparison: (1) the Distinguished TeacherSM credential to be offered by
ABCTE, (2)Â masterâs degrees, and (3) inservice professional development.
Despite the difficulties of assessing the cost-effectiveness of these interÂ­
ventions to improve teacher quality, the resulting analysis can offer an
â
$7,000/4 and $9,000/4.
â
$4,000/4 and $6,000/4.

236 ASSESSING ACCOMPLISHED TEACHING
instructive comparison with the cost-effectiveness of board certification. In
each case, these interventions are focused on improving the teaching quality
of practicing teachers. It would be possible to extend the range of compari-
sons to interventions related to improving the quality of beginning teachers
or to interventions related to improving student learning but not specifically
focused on improving teacher quality. However, we chose to focus our set
of comparisons on the interventions most closely aligned with the goals of
the NBPTS and the request of Congress in evaluating its cost-Â­effectiveness.
Because many people are familiar with the example of class-size reduc-
tion and the original Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio experiment in
T
Â­ ennessee that suggested the potential effectiveness of that intervention, we
also briefly discuss the cost-effectiveness of class-size reduction as a basis
for comparison with board certification.
In the sections that follow, we briefly summarize information about the
benefits and the costs of the three interventions related to teacher quality,
as well as the intervention of class-size reduction.
ABCTE Distinguished TeacherSM Program
The ABCTE is developing an advanced-level certification program that,
when operational, would serve as an alternative to NBPTS certification.
Since data from an operational program are not yet available, an assess-
ment of the benefits and costs of the program must be speculative. Some
information about ABCTEâs planned approach to designing its advanced-
level certification allows us to make some observations about its benefits
and costs in comparison to those of NBPTS certification.
The original plan for the program (which has since been altered) was
to base certification decisions on two requirements: teachers would have to
pass a computer-based test of subject matter, and they would have to dem-
onstrate a measurable impact on the gains of their students on achievement
tests. These two features would allow the ABCTE Distinguished TeacherSM
program to offer an instructive contrast to board certification.
On one hand, the use of computer-based testing alone is likely to be
substantially cheaper than the combined portfolio and computer-based as-
sessment used in the NBPTS process. On the other hand, the requirement
that teachers demonstrate a measurable impact on student test scores means
that the ABCTE certification would have to be limited to teachers who
teach in the grades and subject areas in which standardized tests are rou-
tinely used and available for statistical comparison. The NBPTS approach
offers certificates in a wide array of areas for which standardized tests of
students may not be available (e.g., art, career and technical education,
English as a new language, exceptional needs, health education, library
media, music, physical education, school counseling, world languages).

THE COST-EFFECTIVENESS OF CERTIFICATION 237
It is not clear how a value-added approach would be adapted to include
advanced-level certificates in these areas.
These two contrasting features of the original ABCTE Distinguished
TeacherSM program allow us to lay out some logical implications of this
design. With respect to the potential benefits of the program, there are
some critical implications. The restriction of the program to the grades
and subject areas that are routinely tested would severely limit efforts to
use this advanced-level certification to identify high-quality teachers and to
use certification as a policy lever to improve teacher quality throughout the
system. Given the existing grades and subject areas in which standardized
tests are routinely available, the original approach of ABCTE would limit
its coverage to less than half of the current teaching pool, depending on
the state. Not only would this directly limit the ability of the program to
identify high-quality teachers, but it would also make it very difficult po-
litically to offer incentives because they could not be made available to all
teachers. Note that these limitations would apply to any model for teacher
certification or selection that relied on value-added approaches.
While there are no existing approaches that focus solely on value-
added methodologies, we point out that such an approach downplays the
importance of teachersâ practices. That is, it is possible for teachers to use
practices, such as explicit âteaching to the test,â that may produce increases
in test scores but do not represent exemplary practice.
At the same time, the original ABCTE Distinguished TeacherSM pro-
gram offered a potential advantage on the cost side by substituting a less
expensive testing process that would probably have resulted in a lower
test fee than for NBPTS certification. However, it is important to consider
the implications of this cost reduction in relation to the overall costs of
N
Â­ BPTS certification shown in Table 11-1. The NBPTS cost of processing
an assessment ($2,500-$4,000 per applicant) results in a cost per year of
certified teacher of $500-$800 out of the total cost of NBPTS certifica-
tion of $5,000-$8,00010 per year of certified teaching. The majority of the
costs associated with NBPTS certification result from candidatesâ time in
preparing the assessment materials and from the salary bonuses offered to
successful candidates. The only way to substantially reduce the costs of an
advanced certification program is to reduce one of these two costsâbut it
is difficult to see how ABCTE could effectively reduce either one of those
costs and still be a viable program. That is, teachers need a reason to pur-
sue board certification, most likely some type of extrinsic incentive, such as
â
See http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_065.asp?referrer=list.
â
($2,500 Ã 2)/10; ($4,000 Ã 2)/10.
($2,500 Ã 2); ($4,000 Ã 2), since it takes approximately two applicants to get one board-
10â
certified teacher.

238 ASSESSING ACCOMPLISHED TEACHING
the bonuses in place for NBPTS certification. Furthermore, the assessment
needs to be of sufficient substance that it serves as a reasonable basis for
awarding advanced-level certification; if the assessment is challenging, can-
didates will have to spend time preparing for it (although the preparation
time may not be as long as the estimated 400 hours required to assemble
the NBPTS portfolio). As a result, it seems likely that the total costs of the
ABCTE Distinguished TeacherSM program, as originally designed, would
not have been substantially lower than that of NBPTS certification. This
discussion is also somewhat hypothetical, however, in that the ABCTE has
made changes to its original design making it more similar to the NBPTS
approach.
Recently, the ABCTE Distinguished TeacherSM program has indicated
that it is expanding its assessment criteria by exploring the possibility of
incorporating ratings of three classroom observations in certification deci-
sions as well as a supervisorâs rating. This change could affect both the costs
and the benefits of the program. Classroom observations are quite costly to
conduct, systematize, and score; thus, this potential change could increase
costs of the ABCTE Distinguished TeacherSM program compared with the
original vision. However, as noted above, most of the cost involved with
certification is not in the cost for processing the assessment itself, so this
increase in cost is not likely to be a critical problem. It is also possible that
the ABCTE might decide that classroom observation could be used in place
of test score gains for subjects and grades in which standardized tests are
not available. This is, of course, purely speculative, but if it were the case,
it could potentially remove a severe limitation of the ABCTE Distinguished
TeacherSM program as a policy lever for improving teacher quality. Note,
however, that it would also move the program to becoming more similar
to NBPTS certification.
Thus, as originally planned, the ABCTE presented a slightly less expen-
sive alternative to NBPTS certification, but we are unsure how it would be
made available to all teachers. The new version carries the same restriction
and is likely to result in costs similar to those of the NBPTS.
Obtaining a Masterâs Degree
Another alternative mechanism for improving teacher quality is to
encourage teachers to pursue additional coursework beyond that completed
for the undergraduate degree. Most states require graduate coursework
to maintain the teaching credential, and some require teachers to earn a
graduate degree within a certain amount of time after entering the school
system. The salary structure typically considers both experience and gradu-
ate coursework in determining a teacherâs pay, with a substantial increase
associated with earning a masterâs degree. Thus, we can examine the ben-

THE COST-EFFECTIVENESS OF CERTIFICATION 239
efits associated with earning a masterâs degree in relation to the costs as a
means for comparing our cost-effectiveness estimate for the NBPTS.
Benefits of a Masterâs Degree
Over the past 30 years, approximately 25 studies have compared
achievement test performance for students taught by teachers with and
without a masterâs degree (for a summary, see Harris and Sass, 2007). The
results from these studies are mixed. The majority found that teachers with
masterâs degrees are not any more effective than teachers with bachelorâs de-
grees at improving their studentsâ achievement, and, in some cases, Â­teachers
with masterâs degrees were less effective. However, six of these studies
did report statistically significant positive effects associated with having a
masterâs degree (Betts et al., 2003; Dee, 2004; Ferguson and Ladd, 1996;
Goldhaber and Brewer, 1997; Monk, 1994; Nye et al., 2004), more so in
comparing the effects on math performance than on reading. Only two
studies (Betts et al., 2003; Ferguson and Ladd, 1996) reported statistically
significant effects for reading.
Two studies of teachers and students in North Carolina by Clotfelter,
Ladd, and Vigdor (2006, 2007b) permit direct comparison of the effects of
board certification and of masterâs degrees on student achievement. In their
study focused on the elementary grades, Clotfelter et al. (2006) report that
teachers with a masterâs degree produce achievement test gains similar to
or slightly lower than teachers with bachelorâs degrees, while the effects as-
sociated with national board certification were between 0.02 and 0.03 of a
standard deviation. In their high school study (Clotfelter, Ladd, and Vigdor,
2007b), the authors report that teachers with a masterâs degree improve
their studentâs performance by 0.005 of a standard deviation more than
teachers with a bachelorâs degree. Again, this is lower than the effect they
report for board certification status, which was 0.051.
It is important to recognize that there are some likely explanations for
the poor showing of benefits from masterâs degrees. One explanation relates
to the fact that teachers take their graduate coursework over a period of
time, and thus the effects may occur gradually over the period during which
the coursework is taken. Attaining the degree is just one step in the course-
taking process, and there may not be large effects associated with getting
past this final hurdle. Another explanation relates to the characteristics of
the group of teachers with bachelorâs degrees that serves as the compari-
son group in these analyses. The comparison group may include teachers
who are on the path toward obtaining their masterâs degree, and their own
teaching may be affected by the courses they have taken. These kinds of
analyses encounter the same sorts of confounds that we described in Chap-
ter 7 for comparisons of board-certified and nonboard-certified teachers.

240 ASSESSING ACCOMPLISHED TEACHING
A final explanation relates to the nature of masterâs degree programs.
There are as many conceptions of masterâs degree programs for teachers as
there are institutions of higher education in this country. A masterâs degree
may be awarded after completion of a comprehensive course of study at
an accredited institution. Graduate programs are also available through
alternate and less formal mechanisms, such as online courses, courses of-
fered through the school system, and continuing education credit awarded
for participation in various professional development activities. Thus, when
a teacher obtains a masterâs degree, it is not clear what body of knowledge
or set of skills has been acquired. In contrast, while there are at least 50
different implementation models for the NBPTS program, the assessments
are standardized. That is, all teachers pursuing a given certificate must
demonstrate mastery of the same knowledge, content, and dispositions.
Obtaining the title of board-certified teacher generally means the same thing
regardless of the jurisdiction in which the teacher is employed. This stands
in stark contrast to what is signified by obtaining a masterâs degree.
Costs of a Masterâs Degree
To summarize the cost of a masterâs degree, we use cost categories that
are similar to three of the categories for board certification, omitting the
cost of mentoring. In place of the cost of the assessment process, there is
the cost of providing the graduate program. This is the tuition for graduate
school combined with the subsidy to tuition provided by public and pri-
vate endowment support. The full cost of study is relatively similar across
public and private universities and is roughly $40,000 per year. Thus for a
one- or two-year masterâs degree, the cost is $40,000 or $80,000 (Knapp
et al., 1990, in Cohen and Rice, 2005).11 It is likely, however, that this is
an overestimate of the actual annual costs because teachers typically pursue
graduate degrees on a part-time basis, attending courses in the evenings and
during the summer.
The second cost category is the cost of the time for the candidate, in
this case the candidate for a masterâs degree. Here the required time might
be estimated as 30 weeks of full-time study for each year of the masterâs
degree, corresponding to roughly 1,200 hours for the candidate. Given a
median cost of a teacherâs annual salary of approximately $48,000 (http://
nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d06/) and benefits at approximately 26 percent
for 1,600 hours of work (Hess, 2004), this translates into a cost of roughly
11â
Cohen and Rice (2005) estimate that the cost of a full-time masters program is $71,000
over two years of time. This estimate is in 2003 dollars. When converted to 2008 dollars, the
cost increases to $83,500.

THE COST-EFFECTIVENESS OF CERTIFICATION 241
$45,000 per year of graduate study.12 The third cost category is the annual
salary bonus for teachers with a masterâs degree. Nationally, this bonus is
roughly $7,000 per year.13
The up-front cost of obtaining a masterâs degree is $85,000 per year.
If we assume that the degree takes an average 1.5 years to obtain and that
teachers teach 25 years after obtaining it, then the resulting cost per year
for obtaining the degree is roughly $5,000 if the time for teachers to study
is reimbursed, $2,500 if it is not.14 Adding to this the cost of the average
annual salary bonus, the result is a rough estimate of $12,000 per year of
teaching for a teacher with a masterâs degree if the time for teachers to study
is reimbursed, $9,500 of it is not.
For masterâs degrees, the evidence about benefits is too mixed to allow
us to produce a cost-effectiveness figure that can be compared with the
$1,000-$2,250 cost per 0.01 standard deviation increase in student achieve-
ment that was based on our hypothetical example of requiring all teachers
to become board certified. The cost per class-year of a teacher with a mas-
terâs degree is roughly the same as the cost per class-year of a teacher who
is board certified. As noted in the previous section, however, the available
evidence does not consistently indicate that teachers with masterâs degrees
are more effective than teachers without them.
Inservice Professional Development of Practicing Teachers
Inservice professional development programs are generally intended to
help teachers implement new curriculum, new pedagogy, new procedures,
and conceivably a combination of all three. For example, if a district were
putting in place a new middle school math curriculum with an online for-
mative assessment component, teachers are likely to need to learn the new
curriculum, learn and practice the teaching methods it required, and learn
how to manage the assessment system. This sort of professional develop-
ment is different from the NBPTS process, which might be considered as
a point-in-time demonstration of professional competence. In contrast,
most inservice professional development has an instrumental purpose. As
described in the benefit section above, inservice training offers a means for
improving the quality of all teaching without going through the process of
identifying highly skilled practitioners.
12â
[$48,000 + ($48,000 Ã .26)] Ã (1,200/1,600).
13â
This cost is estimated as the median difference, controlling for experience level, between the
average salary for teachers with a BA degree and the average salary for teachers with an MA
degree. Salaries for teachers with a BA degree can be found at: http://nces.ed.gov/Â­programs/
digest/d07/tables/dt07_073.asp?referrer=list. Salaries for teachers with an MA degree can be
found at: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_074.asp?referrer=list.
($85,000 Ã 1.5)/25 years if time is reimbursed, or ($40,000 Ã 1.5)/25 years, if it is not.
14â

242 ASSESSING ACCOMPLISHED TEACHING
However, there is little research that provides the kind of information
needed for an evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of inservice professional
development. This is not to say that there is no research on inservice train-
ing for teachers, only that it has not produced the information needed for a
cost-effectiveness analysis that can be compared with the cost-effectiveness
of NBPTS certification. A common way to evaluate the benefits of profes-
sional development is in terms of participantsâ satisfaction or other quali-
tative measures. We were able to locate only three studies that evaluated
professional development in terms of quantitative measures: a recent study
by Harris and Sass (2007) that used Floridaâs state data about inservice
training in value-added analyses, as well as two earlier studies (Angrist and
Lavy, 2001; Jacob and Lefgren, 2004). The results from all three studies
suggest there are only weak value-added benefits (i.e., the strongest effect
in Harris and Sass analysis was 0.001 standard deviation, which was sta-
tistically significant) associated with teachersâ professional development
activities.
Similarly, there is little research that documents the costs of inservice
professional development in a way that can be used in a cost-effectiveness
evaluation. Currently, the federal government provides funding to school
districts that can be allocated for professional development. The funding
is provided through the No Child Left Behind legislation, which stipulates
that 15 percent of any districtâs Title I allocation be directly invested in
teacher professional development. In addition, districts receive federal Title
II grants that are specifically targeted for professional development. Because
the federal portion of a districtâs budget is not likely to exceed 5 to 6 percent
of the total, the likelihood is that the federal contribution for professional
development would be less than 1 percent of a districtâs operating budget.
And in many cases a substantial portion of those funds could be directed
to salaries for those who provide professional development. It is difficult,
however, to directly connect this funding to specific inservice training activi-
ties in a way that would be useful for a cost-effectiveness evaluation.
Cost estimates of other types of professional development activities are
also provided in Cohen and Rice (2005). They evaluated nine other profes-
sional development programs. Their findings indicated that per-participant
costs (in 2003 dollars) ranged from a low of $1,438 for the Connecticut
Beginning Educator Support and Training program to a high of $14,000
for the Leadership Institute in St. Paul, Minnesota, with a median value of
roughly $3,100. The studies that Cohen and Rice utilized are fairly dated,
ranging from 1994 to 2001, and they provide no estimates of benefits.
Given the state of the literature base at the current time, we are unable to
derive a cost-effective estimate associated with inservice professional train-
ing for teachers.

THE COST-EFFECTIVENESS OF CERTIFICATION 243
Evaluations of the Effects of Class-Size Reduction
A considerable amount of research has focused on the costs and ben-
efits associated with class-size reduction policies, and we draw on those
estimates to compare with the effectiveness of the NBPTS. The two inter-
ventions are, of course, not directly comparable. Class-size reduction in
and of itself provides a means to produce improvement in student learning.
National board certification provides a means to identify the more effective
teachers, but, as described earlier, additional actions are required to realize
the benefits. Nevertheless, the comparison can be instructive when consider-
ing situations in which policy makers must decide how to allocate funding.
The funding could be used to hire additional (presumably effective) teachers
so that students can be assigned to smaller classes. Alternatively, the fund-
ing could be used to encourage teachers to pursue board certification so that
the more effective teachers are identified and their skills used. A comparison
can help to understand which is the better investment of funds.
There have been several attempts to implement class-size reduction
policies. In 1985, the state of Tennessee initiated a policy targeted at reduc-
ing the student-teacher ratio in classes. The state implemented the policy as
an experiment designed to examine the effects on achievement of assigning
students to classes with smaller numbers of students. Students entering kin-
dergarten were assigned at random to either a small class (13-17 students)
or a regular class (22-26 students). Teachers were randomly assigned to the
classes. Students remained in their original experimental assignment (small
versus large class) over the course of four years (K-3), with a follow-up data
collection in seventh grade (Finn and Achilles, 1999).
The results from this experiment indicated that students in the smaller
classes performed better than those in the larger classes, with effect sizes
ranging from 0.15 to 0.25. Given an estimated average annual cost of
$60,000 per teacher (for salary plus benefits), this is roughly a $30,00015
cost per year for a lower class size (e.g., reducing the class size from 24 to
16 students) for a benefit of roughly 0.20 standard deviation. This converts
to a cost of $1,50016 per 0.01 standard deviation increase per class per
year.
This can be compared with our estimates of the effectiveness of na-
tional board certification (under the hypothetical situation in which all
teachers are required to become board certified). Superficially, the two
estimates are approximately equal: NBPTS certification results in a smaller
effect (0.04 versus 0.20) but also at a lower cost ($2,000-$8,000 versus
15â
With teacher pay at $60,000, a class size of 24 costs $2,500 per child. A class size of 16
costs $3,750 per child. The difference ($1,250) is the additional cost per student of class size
reduction. The total cost is then $1,250 Ã 24.
16â
$30,000/(0.20/0.01).

244 ASSESSING ACCOMPLISHED TEACHING
$30,000 per classroom). The resulting cost-effectiveness is similar for the
two interventions: $500-$2,00017 for mandatory NBPTS certification ver-
sus $1,500 for class-size reduction per 0.01 standard deviation increase
per year per class.18 We caution, however, that the two interventions are
not directly comparable because class-size reduction actually caused the
increase, whereas the NBPTS example is hypothetical and would require
additional policy actions to produce such an increase.
The effectiveness estimates from Tennesseeâs controlled experiment
ultimately helped persuade a number of policy makers to adopt class-size
reduction as an educational intervention in other states. Continuing studies
of the effects of class-size reduction have led to substantial revisions in the
estimates of the effectiveness of this intervention when implemented as a
statewide policy. For example, results from the study of class-size reduction
policy in California revealed that the effects were statistically significant but
quite small, in the range of 0.05 to 0.08 of a standard deviation (Bohrnstedt
and Stecher, 2002; Stecher, Bohrnstedt, Kirst, McRobbie, and Williams,
2001). In part, this was a consequence of the limited supply of experienced,
high-quality teachers that were required to implement the policy.
Evaluating the Research and Development Investment in the NBPTS
Approximately $200 million (see footnote 2) was spent on the research
and development that went into developing the assessments that now consti-
tute the NBPTS certification program. Eleven private organizations funded
the board during its developmental years. The Carnegie Foundation was the
largest supporter, providing approximately $1 million per year for 11 years.
Other funding sources included the Ford Foundation, the DeWitt Wallace-
Readerâs Digest Fund, the Lilly Endowment, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the
Atlantic Philanthropies, Xerox, IBM, DuPont, AT&T, and Chrysler (Han-
naway and Bischoff, 2005). The board began receiving federal support in
1991, under the first President Bush, which increased substantially under
President Clinton. According to Hannaway and Bischoff, between 1987
and 2002, the board received over $100 million in federal funding and an
equivalent amount from other sources.
In evaluating this research and development investment of $200 million
(see foonote 2), it is useful to provide some other figures related to teach-
ing to put the investment in perspective. As noted in Chapter 6, there are
roughly 4 million teachers in grades K-12, of whom approximately 64,000
have become board certified. The annual salary and benefits for these
17â
($2,000/4);($8,000/4).
18â
Thesecosts for class-size reduction do not include the facility costs of providing additional
classrooms.

THE COST-EFFECTIVENESS OF CERTIFICATION 245
Â­ eachers total roughly $24019 billion each year. When administrative and
t
other costs for K-12 education are added to the cost of teachersâ salaries,
the total cost of K-12 education is slightly more than $500 billion per year
(http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_029.asp?referrer=list).
Compared with the annual cost of K-12 education, the $200 million
(see foonote 2) investment in the NBPTS is small, representing less than
0.04 percent of the cost of K-12 education for a single year. Considering
the larger goal of NBPTS, which was to transform the profession of teach-
ing by articulating a conception of accomplished teaching and developing
an assessment for identifying accomplished teaching, the $200 million (see
foonote 2) cost of the investment does not seem like a high price to pay.
To date the NBPTS has not been able to bring about the transformation
in teaching that was hoped for two decades ago, although it has produced
an innovative certification process that does in fact identify accomplished
teachers. However, in evaluating research and development costs, it is im-
portant to remember that any single research and development effort is a
calculated gamble with an uncertain chance of success. It is inappropriate
to evaluate the initial investment decision with the knowledge available
now that the NBPTS has not brought about the transformation it hoped
to achieve. Instead, we have to look at the decision that was made at the
time when no one knew whether or not the NBPTS would be successful
in transforming the profession of teaching. If we consider that choice, it is
probably fair to say that from the beginning the likelihood was probably
low that the project would have truly been able to transform the profes-
sion of teaching. At the same time, however, the educational payoff, if the
p
Â­ roject had achieved the unlikely result of transforming teaching, could
have been very high indeed. And the gamble in the NBPTS was not underÂ­
taken lightly but represented a bold and serious effort by many leaders
in education research and policy. For a serious research and development
gamble that had a chance to transform teaching, even with a low prob-
ability, it does not seem excessive to have invested 0.1 percent of the cost
of K-12 education for a single year.
It is also useful to compare the $200 million (see foonote 2) invest-
ment in the NBPTS with the size of the annual research and development
investment in K-12 education. Although the cost of K-12 education is quite
high, the level of investment in research and development for K-12 educa-
tion is quite low, relative to the rate of research and development spending
in many other sectors of the economy. The annual investment in research
and development for K-12 education is on the order of $1.3 billion per
19â
$60,000 in salary and benefits Ã 4 million teachers.

246 ASSESSING ACCOMPLISHED TEACHING
year.20 Thus, although the investment in the NBPTS is small compared with
the overall annual cost of K-12 education, it is large compared with the
annual investment in research and development for K-12 education. Still,
if the investment in research and development investment for the NBPTS
represented 15 percent of all research and development for K-12 education
for a single yearâthat does not seem a high price to pay for a program that
was a serious effort to bring about a transformation in teaching quality. For
comparison, the Gates Foundation has invested roughly $650 million in its
small high schools program (Hendrie, 2004).
The above calculation considers the costs that the federal government
and private foundations invested in the NBPTS to get the program up and
running. A more expansive consideration of costs might treat the entire
program as an experiment and count the costs of certifying roughly 64,000
teachers as part of the ultimate cost of conducting that experiment. Earlier
we saw that the cost per year of certified teaching is roughly $6,000, re-
sulting in a total cost of $300 million over the 64,000 teachers. This cost
clearly dominates the initial $200 million investment itself (see footnoteÂ 2).
However, if the entire $500 million cost is seen as representing nothing
more than a serious research and development gamble to bring about a
transformation in teaching quality, it is probably fair to say that the gamble
was still a reasonable one to take.
It is important to note that this discussion about the research and de-
velopment investment in the NBPTS has been stated from the perspective
of the original decision 20 years ago to make a serious commitment to
developing this particular vision of transforming teaching quality for K-12
education. Evaluating whether or not that initial decision two decades ago
was an appropriate investment in research and development is entirely dif-
ferent than evaluating the current decision about whether or not to continue
to invest in the program. The decision about whether to continue to invest
in the NBPTS going forward must rest on evidence that its continuing pres-
ence is helping to improve K-12 education.
Conclusions
In this chapter, we have attempted to address the final aspect of
our charge, which was significantly complicated by the limited evidence
base. There was insufficient evidence on which to base a thorough cost-
20â
This figure is the sum of the 2008 budget allocations for the Department of Educationâs
Institute of Education Sciences ($546.1 million) and for the National Science Foundationâs
Education and Human Resources ($725.5). Details about the Department of Educationâs bud-
get can be found at: http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget09/summary/appendix4.
pdf. Details about the National Science Foundationâs budget can be found at: http://www.nsf.
gov/about/budget/.

THE COST-EFFECTIVENESS OF CERTIFICATION 247
effectiveness evaluation of the NBPTS, primarily due to a lack of research
documenting benefits. We note that it was not necessarily the case that
there is evidence of no benefits, but that the evidence base is simply too
thin, and findings from research that has been conducted are in need of
corroboration. For example, research on the effects of board certification
on teachersâ longevity in the field and studies of the extent to which the
certification process improves their effectiveness (as described in Chapters 8
and 9) have the potential to yield estimates of benefits that could be used in
future cost-effectiveness evaluations. It was also not possible to compare the
effectiveness of the NBPTS with other mechanisms for improving teacher
qualityâsuch as alternative kinds of advanced-certification programs for
teachers, encouraging teachers to pursue masterâs degrees, and providing
inservice professional developmentâbecause of a lack of information on
both the costs and benefits of these activities. While our cost analysis sug-
gests that the annual per-teacher costs associated with board certification
are probably lower than annual per-teacher costs of obtaining a masterâs
degree, a sufficient number of rigorous studies was not available to allow
us to compare the benefits of these two interventions in a meaningful way.
Thus, we conclude:
Conclusion 11-2: At this time, it is not possible to conduct a thorough
cost-effectiveness evaluation of the NBPTS because of the paucity of data
on the benefits of the program and on both the costs and benefits of other
mechanisms intended to improve teacher quality. Such an evaluation should
be undertaken if and when the necessary evidence becomes available.
Because of the lack of evidence for a thorough cost-effectiveness evalu-
ation, we undertook a somewhat speculative approach to considering the
cost-effectiveness of the NBPTS. We laid out three kinds of potential ben-
efits. To date, the existing research provides evidence of only one of these
benefits: identification of high-quality teachers. We pointed out that this
benefit cannot be realized without some additional action that makes use
of the skills of board-certified teachers, and we explored the hypothetical
example of requiring all experienced teachers to become board certified.
While this is a policy that has not yet been tried, tested, or debated, we
think it is worth considering, possibly on a localized basis for all teach-
ers or teachers in some schools. Given the substantial investment that has
already been made in the NBPTS certification program, it is important to
consider not only the cost-effectiveness of NBPTS certification as a realized
mechanism for improving teacher quality, but also its potential if it were
to be used more actively by states as a policy lever for improving teacher
quality throughout the education system.

The mission of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) is to establish "high and rigorous standards for what teachers should know and be able to do, to certify teachers who meet those standards, and to advance other education reforms for the purpose of improving student learning in American schools." In response to a request from the U.S. Congress, the National Research Council developed a framework for evaluating programs that award advanced-level teacher certification and applied that framework in an evaluation of the impacts of the NBPTS. Specifically, this book addresses the impacts on students, teachers, and the educational system in this country. Assessing Accomplished Teaching finds that teachers who earn board certification are more effective at improving their students' achievement than other teachers, but school systems vary greatly in the extent to which they recognize and make use of board-certified teachers. Many of the questions on the evaluation framework could not be answered because the data have not been collected, and the report makes recommendations for the kinds of research that are needed to fully evaluate the impacts of board certification by the NBPTS.

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